Category: podcasting

Audacity recovery utility

For you Mac users* of Audacity you may have had a crash and lost your recording. It happens… trust me. I just had a massive crash and turned to my friend, the Audacity Recovery Utility, and it made a very bad problem turn into a blip on the radar… a small bump in the road…

You see, Audacity is always saving your audio in about 10 second chunks. The problem is that in a lengthy recording, you have hundreds of these chunks. You could string them together one by one, but that would take forever and probably not work anyways. Download the program (there’sa version for older PowerPC Macs as well as Intel ones) and make it your friend. The trick is finding the hidden temp files… go into your Audacity preferences tab to find them – it’s usually in a hidden folder you can’t find without going into the finder (Go>Go to Folder). Once you have them, plug that path into the recovery utility and let it roll. It will string these files together into a WAV file in the same place as those temp files.

After that, breathe a sigh of relief.

*PC people, check out a similar option here.

Wizzard Media: Over 1 billion served

Amazing news today regarding podcasting… Wizzard Media, owner of LibSyn and other hosting platforms announced it served over 1 billion podcasts in 2007. This is (I believe) certified via their partnership with Nielson announced last September, so the numbers aren’t inflated – an allegation that has dogged PodShow in the past year, rightly or wrongly. (“Perhaps it too topped a billion but was concerned that no one would believe them,” writes Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb.)

Rob Walch, Wizzard VP of podcaster relations had this to say to Podcasting News:

There is a lot of misguided talk about podcasting being dead. We just are not seeing it. We continue to see growth in the numbers each month. To us, at least, podcasting keeps growing.
* * *
We hope that 2008 will be the year that advertisers stop thinking of podcasting as an experiment, and start thinking of it as a necessity for every campaign.

Good news all around!

Zune followup

Just caught an interesting comment from the folks at Zune here at the Nineball Media blog that I wanted to put front and center regarding linking to Zune podcasting links:

Thanks for the great post on 1-click podcast subscription links for the Zune. We also have a Deep Link URL process that will enable podcasters to link to their podcasts page in the Zune Marketplace.

For the podcast deep link below to work, podcasters will need to verify that their podcast is in the Zune Marketplace. If your podcast is not in the Zune Marketplace, then download and install the software and submit your podcast feed URL to us through the podcast page in the Marketplace. Please be patience after your submission and only submit a valid XML based RSS feed with active enclosures.

If your podcast is already in the Zune Marketplace, then follow the steps below to get the unique deep linking URL to use for your Zune podcast link.

Here is how to make a deep link to a podcast program page in the Zune Marketplace.

1. Go to the Podcast page in Zune Marketplace you want to make a link.
2. Click on “Tell a Friend” and send it to yourself via email.
3. In the e-mail message, right-click on the album name and copy hyperlink.
– Link Code: http://social.zune.net/external/LaunchClient.aspx?mtype=Podcast&mid= ID
4. Paste the hyperlink somewhere as this is the complete link you will need (i.e., Outlook, Word). If you paste it and just the album name is pasted, right click on the album name again and select Edit Hyperlink to find the URL.

Here is a working example of the Deep Link:
http://social.zune.net/my/ContentRedirect.ashx?mtype=Podcast&mid=aae52850-0b06-484e-82e2-bafbdc5a494a

Rob Greenlee, Zune Podcast Programming Lead

Thanks Rob… I really have to confess I like the attention the Zune is paying to podcasting. I’d love to try one… what are the odds they’ll support Mac OS anytime soon? Oh, about as likely as a Dolphins Super Bowl appearance… gotcha.

How to make a Zune podcast subscription link

We have a “no media player left behind” policy here at Nineball… whether the buzz is real, manufactured, genuine, or some combination of all three, the Zune is getting some attention and it does support podcasting. If you’re a podcaster and want to make it easier for Zune owners to subscribe to your podcast, here is how to make a one-click subscribe link.

Ingredients

  • Your RSS feed
  • The title of your show

Prep

zune://subscribe/?The title of your show=Your RSS feed

Insert ingredients… serve and enjoy.

That’s it. Here are a few examples so you can see it:

For everyone’s favorite yoga and lifestyle show, Hip Tranquil Chick:

zune://subscribe/?Hip Tranquil Chick=http://libsyn.com/hiptranquilchick/rss

For my side project, the Nonprofit Law Podcast:

zune://subscribe/?Nonprofit Law Podcast=http://feeds.feedburner.com/nplawcast

Pretty easy stuff. Notice you can put spaces in there… works just fine. Note that the “zune://” piece will tell the clicking PC to fire up Zune software… if your computer doesn’t have it, it will stare at you blankly and go, “huh?”. Just so you know…

Some people like to use “chiclets” in a sidebar… there’s a nice one over at podcast.com. Looks like this:

There you have it… now you can welcome Zune owners to podcasting with an easy-to-use one-click subscribe option!

Challenging sound environments

I’m monitoring a client recording session this afternoon in a very challenging sound environment… A lunch banquet keynote. Rather than struggle with the sound isolation, I’ve decided to embrace it… It might be an interesting “sound seeing” experience for listeners to hear the klinking cutlery with a full bodied sounding speaker rather than a tinny muffled sound. We shall see what emerges in post-production!

Has anyone else recorded these types of events? Directional mice seem to be a good answer, but I’m interested in hearing other experiences too.

Wrapping up Blog World

Day two was significantly quieter… I suspect Vegas claimed a few victims overnight! Going to one more session on social networking proved to be one too many as the info wasn’t as helpful as yesterday’s sessions. I just finished a session on mic technique by the rep from Shure – the crowd was pretty sparse, which was a shame because he put together a nice (if a bit techie) piece. Shure mics are outstanding for the more advanced podcasters out there (their price points tend to be higher than I’d recommend for newbies).

I got to meet Rob Walch at the Wizzard Media booth, and we had a nice chat about all things podcasting and – of course – the iPhone. Rob’s an important voice in podcasting (Podcast 411 is a place I tell all people to check out). I also got a chance to see Justine from iJustine wandering about. She was the one with the massive iPhone bill video that got a kajillion views this summer on YouTube.

All in all, a great show. I think I’m going to skip out on the Mark Cuban keynote… if he was going to talk about whether he was going to buy a hockey team, I’d probably go, but for now… I’m ready to grab some coffee and wait up for my red eye back to DC. I’ve got a lot of work to do based on some of the great info and networking here!